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Development and Visualisation of a Distributed Railway Control System

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Development and Visualisation of a Distributed Railway Control System Development and Visualisation of a Distributed Railway Control System Mads Egedal Kirchho Kongens Lyngby 2016 Technical University of Denmark Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Richard Petersens Plads, building 324, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark Phone +45 4525 3031 [email protected] www.compute.dtu.dk Summary (English) The goal of this thesis is to develop a distributed control system for railways, implement and visualize it using Lego Mindstorms hardware and Lego trains. The system should uphold the safety requirements of preventing trains from colliding and derailing. Railway control systems are traditionally centralised, but using a distributed approach could be more cost-eective. Through the model railway, issues when implementing such a system can be safely exposed and at low cost, and test whether it works and is viable. An analysis is made of the available Lego hardware components and what kinds of model railways can be made with them, before a specic design is chosen. An algorithm is proposed that can control the trains and ensure safety. It is then rened and formally veried through formal modelling in UMC. The algorithm is then implemented on the Mindstorms hardware in Java, along with a Lego API that allows it to control the Lego railway. The nal system is shown to have some erroneous behaviour, but this is most likely stemming from errors in the API or imprecision in the Lego hardware. The control system itself is working. It is concluded that the distributed control system is viable and that visualizing an implementation using a model railway has merit, although the hardware is hard to work with. ii Summary (Danish) Målet for dette speciale er at udvikle et distribueret jernbane kontrol system, implementeret og visuliaseret ved brug af Lego Mindstorms hardware og Lego toge. Systemet bør leve op til sikkerhedskrav der forhindrer togene i at kollidere og blive afsporet. Sådanne kontrol systemer er tradionelt centraliserede, men et distribueret jern- bane kan potentielt være mere billigere. Gennem modeljernbanen kan problemer med at implementere sådan et system i praktisk udforskes sikkert og billigt og det kan testes om det virker og om det er værd at arbejde videre med. En analyse blev lavet af hvilke tilgængelige Lego hardware komponenter der er tilgængelige og hvilke slags model modeller der kan bygges af dem før et en- deligt design bliver valgt. En algoritme fremlægges der skal kunne kontrollere togene og sikre sikkerhed. Den blev fornet og dens sikkerhed påvist gennem modellering. Algoritmen blev så implementeret på Mindstorms hardware i Java sammen med en Lego API som kommunikere og styrer Lego jernbanen. Det endelige system har visse fejl, men disse skyldes sandsynligvis fejl i APIet og upræcision i Lego hardwaren. Control systemet i sig selv virker. Det bliver kon- kluderet at et distrubueret kontrol system nt kan virke og implementeringen af en modeljernbane har en vis merit, omend hardwaren er svær at arbejde med. iv Preface This thesis was prepared at DTU Compute in fullment of the requirements for acquiring an M.Sc. in Engineering. It is rated at 30 points. Anne Haxthausen and Alessandro Fantechi were supervisors. The thesis deals with designing a model railway, modelling and implementations. Readers should have some basic knowledge of programming and modelling to fully understand the contents. The report is intended to be read from one end to the other, following a roughly chronological ow. Lyngby, 01-August-2016 Mads Egedal Kirchho vi Acknowledgements Giant thanks to my two supervisors, Anne and Alessandro for putting in all the time and eort into helping with this project. For all the weekly meetings, discussions, eort and energy. viii Contents Summary (English) i Summary (Danish) iii Preface v Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction 1 2 Railway Domain 3 3 Lego Domain 5 3.1 Mindstorms . .5 3.1.1 Components . .6 3.1.2 Programming . .9 3.2 Power Functions & Train components . .9 4 Lego Railway Design 11 4.1 Goals . 11 4.2 Design Options . 12 4.3 Final Design . 13 5 Analysis 15 5.0.1 Requirements . 15 5.0.2 Inspiration . 16 5.0.3 Constraints . 17 5.1 Algorithm Concept . 17 x CONTENTS 6 Modelling 19 6.1 Goals . 19 6.2 Tools . 20 6.3 Design . 20 6.4 Final Model . 22 6.5 Verication . 23 7 Implementation 25 7.1 Assumptions . 25 7.2 Terminology . 25 7.3 Goals . 26 7.4 Code Quality . 27 7.4.1 Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) . 29 7.4.2 Self-documenting code where possible, comments for gen- eral descriptions, intent and the rest . 30 7.4.3 Practical Encapsulation . 31 7.4.4 Formatting . 31 7.4.5 You aren't gonna need it (YAGNI) . 31 7.5 Development method . 32 7.5.1 Software Tools . 32 7.5.2 Work ow . 32 7.5.3 Implementation Phases . 33 7.6 The Code . 34 7.6.1 Structure . 34 8 Testing 41 8.1 Method . 41 8.2 Results . 43 8.2.1 Known bugs & issues . 43 8.2.2 Documentation . 44 9 Conclusion 47 A Project plan 49 B Model Code 53 C Implementation Code 67 C.1 ControlUnit . 67 C.2 SwitchBox . 68 C.3 TrainControlComputer . 75 C.4 AutomaticStart . 78 C.5 TrackLayout . 83 C.6 Communicator . 84 C.7 Detector . 88 CONTENTS xi C.8 Switch . 91 C.9 TrainMotor . 92 C.10 RemoteCalibrator . 93 C.11 SetNameEast . 94 C.12 SetNameWest . 95 C.13 ClearReservation . 95 C.14 HailIncomingTrain . 96 C.15 ReservationFree . 97 C.16 Signal . 97 C.17 SwitchBoxSignal . 98 C.18 SyncFail . 98 C.19 SyncReservation . 99 C.20 SyncSuccesful . 100 C.21 TrainControlComputerSignal . 101 C.22 TrainDetected . 101 C.23 TrainNoLongerDetected . 102 C.24 TryReserve . 103 C.25 UpdatePosition . 104 C.26 WaitForReservation . 105 C.27 CommTest . 105 C.28 DetectorTest . 106 C.29 DetectSensor . 107 C.30 Ev3onNxt . 108 C.31 FullAPITest . 109 C.32 HelloWorld . 109 C.33 MotorTest . 110 C.34 SensorTest . 110 C.35 SimpleTrainRun . 112 C.36 SwitchTest . 112 C.37 SystemTest . 113 C.38 TestMultipleConnection . 118 C.39 TrainSpeed . 119 C.40 UltraSonic . 120 C.41 DebugMessage . 121 xii CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction The computer systems used to manage train railways have traditionally been centralised. The whole system is monitored and controlled from a single com- puting hub. This means all activity and communication has to routed back to this point. This requires a very robust communication infrastructure, possibly over the very great distances a railway can stretch. These kinds of systems can be expensive to set-up, however, especially for small local networks. A possi- bly more cost-ecient alternative would be a distributed system. Here, each part of the network would have their own logical units that in co-operation with the trains computers could manage the system independently. Such a sys- tem is untested however, and the distributed approach has disadvantages. The lack of a global state may create conicting information and lead to disaster, if not designed right. Such a system must be proven to be safe before it can be implemented in the real world. Thus, it is the goal of the project to implement a simplied model of a distributed railway system. This is done via Lego Mindstorms, a much cheaper option than building a railway and banging trains together. Creating an actual, physical system, means we can visualize the functionality of the program and actually see it work in practice. Further, we will evaluate whether this approach in itself is valid, whether the model railway has any value as a tool for visualizing and proving correctness for control systems. 2 Introduction This paper is heavily inspired by the paper "Formal development and verication of a distributed railway control system" [1], and can be seen as an extension to it. It consists of roughly three parts: • Design of a Lego Railway, setting up the hardware and developing an Lego API that will control the railway and trains, acting as a bridge between the generic control system and the physical model. • Proposing a control algorithm, modelling and formally verifying its cor- rectness. • Implementing the algorithm on the Lego railway, combining it with the API and testing the whole system. Chapter 2 Railway Domain We consider a quite simple railway. Each station has only two tracks with a switching track at either end that allow directing the train to the track they need to go to. Station are connected to other stations via single tracks. Each switching track has a Switch Box, or SB, in charge of it. A computational unit that has state for the railway in its immediate vicinity. It decides when the track is switched and when trains may enter and leave the station. Trains are controlled through by a Train Control Computer, which stores infor- mation about the trains route and negotiates with the SB for access to specic pieces of track. 4 Railway Domain Chapter 3 Lego Domain 3.1 Mindstorms Lego has for many years developed and sold the productline "Mindstorms" which are a set of programmable "bricks" that can be used to construct robots and other such. The product line consists of a central "Intelligent Brick" which is essentially a simple computer, that comes with a simple, visual programming language and the ability to interface with other Mindstorms components. These include rotary servo motors and various sensors, notably including ultrasonic, infrared, light- and color sensors. When connected to the intelligent brick, these feed measured data back to it. The programming can then make decisions based on the data, such as turning a connected motor a specic amount of degrees. Mindstorms exists in three generations, the RCX, NXT and EV3.
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